953 research outputs found

    Assessing the climate impacts of Chinese dietary choices using a telecoupled global food trade and local land use framework

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    Global emissions trajectories developed to meet the 2⁰C temperature target are likely to rely on the widespread deployment of negative emissions technologies and/or the implementation of substantial terrestrial carbon sinks. Such technologies include afforestation, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), but mitigation options for agriculture appear limited. For example, using the Global Calculator tool (http://www.globalcalculator.org/), under a 2⁰C pathway, the ‘forests and other land use’ sector is projected to become a major carbon sink, reaching -15 GtCO2e yr-1 by 2050, compared to fossil emissions of 21 GtCO2e yr-1. At the same time, rates of agricultural emissions remain static at about 6 GtCO2e yr-1, despite increasing demands for crop and livestock production to meet the forecast dietary demands of the growing and increasingly wealthy global population. Emissions in the Global Calculator are sensitive to the assumed global diet, and particularly to the level and type of meat consumption, which in turn drive global land use patterns and agricultural emissions. Here we assess the potential to use a modified down-scaled Global Calculator methodology embedded within the telecoupled global food trade framework, to estimate the agricultural emissions and terrestrial carbon stock impacts in China and Brazil, arising from a plausible range of dietary choices in China. These dietary choices are linked via telecoupling mechanisms to Brazilian crop production (e.g. Brazilian soy for Chinese animal feed provision) and drive land and global market dynamics. ‘Spill-over’ impacts will also be assessed using the EU and Malawi as case studies

    The existence of an inverse limit of inverse system of measure spaces - a purely measurable case

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    The existence of an inverse limit of an inverse system of (probability) measure spaces has been investigated since the very beginning of the birth of the modern probability theory. Results from Kolmogorov [10], Bochner [2], Choksi [5], Metivier [14], Bourbaki [3] among others have paved the way of the deep understanding of the problem under consideration. All the above results, however, call for some topological concepts, or at least ones which are closely related topological ones. In this paper we investigate purely measurable inverse systems of (probability) measure spaces, and give a sucient condition for the existence of a unique inverse limit. An example for the considered purely measurable inverse systems of (probability) measure spaces is also given

    Experimental study of the uptake of water by soybean roots

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    The water extraction from soil by plant roots was treated by assuming that such extraction could be represented as a continuously distributed sink (negative source) function. Preliminary results with soybeans grown in soil columns showed that a small part of the root system could extract most of the water used in transpiration. Root density as measured by root length per unit volume of soil was not directly correlated with water uptake. Both the hydraulic conductivity of the soil and root density played a major role in determining the rate of extraction of water at a given depth in the soil. Water uptake per unit root length ranged up to about 0.5 cm3/cm of root/day. This kind of data gives more insight into the conditions at the root-soil interface. The experimental work in this project was developed from a numerical analysis which was supported by an earlier OWRR project (Project No. 65-O3G), and is an example of a basic approach to the study of the interaction of the plant with its environment in which the available degree of understanding of the water flow process in soil is brought to bear upon the plant-soil interaction. The importance of evapotranspiration is well known in the hydrologic cycle. The experimental work described in this report makes a further contribution toward our understanding of this process.U.S. Geological SurveyU.S. Department of the InteriorOpe

    The Oombulgurri Project Clancy Committee report

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    In early August the Oombulgurri community requested assistance in the following terms. On behalf of the Oombulgurri Community, we invite assistance in developing the grain and pasture cropping at Oombulgurri. We have experimented with peanuts, sorghum, and many varieties of vegetables. This has tested the reality of hopes to expand acreage and varieties to become self-sufficient in stock feed. The Farm and Garden Guild now needs the expertise of your services to plan a four-year programme. vie need assistance in choosing from the many options, opinions and advices available from Australia and elsewhere, for grain production, pastures, methods appropriate to our geography, and machinery, to minimise expenditure and produce food for the stock expansion necessary to be self-sufficient in locally produced food for the town. Our concerns so far have been to start poultry, pigs, goats and horses stocking to provide useful work for everyone and food „ ually increase production and decrease imports with the appropriate use of manpower, water and other resources. We believe we can produce stock feed locally and grad- We attach our initial estimates of need which includes an estimate of projected stocking and machinery needs as well as a list of what is on hand

    Thermochemical recovery technology for improved modern engine fuel economy – part 1: analysis of a prototype exhaust gas fuel reformer

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    Exhaust gas fuel reforming has the potential to improve the thermal efficiency of internal combustion engines, as well as simultaneously reduce gaseous and particulate emissions.</p

    Experimental Evaluation of Dual-Modality Electrical Tomographic Systems on Gas-Oil-Water Flow in Horizontal Pipeline

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    A variety of dual-modality tomographic systems have been proposed for the characterisation of multiphase flow, but the evaluation of such systems are generally carried out under simplified flow conditions, such as stratified flow and slug flow. This paper reports the evaluation results of a dualmodality electrical tomographic system in an industry-scale gas-oil-water three-phase flow. Experimental conditions include water-to-liquid ratio (WLR) from 0% to 100% in parallel with gas volume fractions from 0% to 100%, which produces a variety of flow patterns, such as stratified-wavy flow, slug flow, plug flow, bubbly flow, and annular flow. Commercialised ITS M3C (ECT) and V5R (ERT) dual-modality systems were applied to perform the measurement. A threshold-based multidimensional data fused approach was implemented for the data fusion process. The results demonstrated that the ERT system is able to measure water continuous flow with WLR higher than 40%, which is in good agreement with previous reports. The ECT system is able to measure from 0% to 100% WLR, far beyond its conventional capabilities. Even though the tomograms are distorted when WLR is higher than 90%, this result is much better than the reported 40% limit. Visualisation and mean concentration derived from the tomograms by advanced data fusion verify the capability of the system in the application of gas-oil-water flow characterisation
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